The present invention relates to shoulder protection devices, and more particularly, to a shoulder protection device particularly suited to absorb impact loads or forces directed to the shoulder area of a user during the discharge from shoulder-supported firearms such as rifles and the like.
As is well knowm, impact loads or forces caused by the rapid release of kinetic recoil energy of a shoulder-supported firearm as it decelerates against the shoulder can be a nuisance to the user of such firearms. Indeed, the faster the deceleration, the greater the shock or impact load to the shoulder. Continuous and repeated use of heavy shoulder-supported firearms such as shotguns and rifles can thus be distressful, fatiguing and often painful for a marksman or hunter due to repeated and unavoidable recoil impact loads directed to the shoulder area. For this reason, to enable the user to shoot with more comfort and with less fatigue, it is often desirable to provide the user's shoulder with some sort of protective padding or covering to reduce the rate of firearm deceleration and at least partially absorb such loads.
There exist many types of energy absorbing devices or recoil pads intended to reduce the level of impact loads directed to a user's shoulder due to firearm recoil. Various padded outer garments, hunting vests and shoulder pad arrangements have been devised having energy absorbing materials which offer the user some means of protection against such recoil loads. However, since the energy absorbing material has a substantial influence on the rate of deceleration of the firearm, and thus the magnitude of impact load on the shoulder, the effectiveness of such devices depends upon the type of absorbing material utilized. Materials which have heretofore been used in such applications include felt, hair, layers of cloth, leather, hard rubber, sponge rubber, and foamed plastic. However, firm materials such as leather or hard rubber do not deform very quickly when subjected to a rapidly moving firearm. Such materials thus act more like a hard surface--they stop the firearm very quickly, and result in a sharp deceleration of the firearm, as well as substantial shock loading of the shoulder. Other materials such as sponge rubber, felt, hair and layers of cloth have interconnected air spaces which permit displacement and a flattening or bottoming out of the material, whereupon they also behave more like a hard surface. While plastic foam offers an improvement over the previous materials, foam plastic material will exhibit the same bottoming out behavior in certain applications. Such behavior can be reduced by increasing the thickness of protective pads incorporating such materials. However, larger pad thickness is undesirable since it contributes to increased bulk and general profile of a shoulder protection device.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a shoulder protection device for absorbing firearm recoil loads which allows the firearm to decelerate over a longer time period than that possible with prior devices, with an attendant smaller shock or impact load imparted to the shoulder of the user. It is moreover desirable to provide such a device having an energy absorbing material which allows for a relatively thin low profile protective pad which does not bottom out and act like a hard surface during firearm use.
The present invention is intended to satisfy the above desirable features through the provision of several embodiments of a new and improved shoulder protection device in the form of a thin flexible protective pad having a cover portion, an internal envelope and a solid internal energy absorbing thermoplastic elastomer matrix within the internal envelope. The firmness and composition of the matrix is such that it deforms quickly, allows for enhanced deceleration periods, and yet generates a restoring force so that it does not bottom out and act like a hard surface during use. An alternate form of solid elastomer matrix eliminates the need for the internal envelope, and can be molded with a plurality of relief areas or recesses of various profiles in the surface which faces or abuts the user's shoulder, or with a series of non-communicating internal compression chambers, to yield an energy absorbing pad with an enhanced three-dimensional deformation or energy absorbing geometry. The device includes retention means located on the external cover which allows the device to be removably retained at desired locations on a user's garment.
The above and other features of the invention will become apparent from a reading of the detailed description of the preferred embodiments, which make reference to the following set of drawings.